RE:RE:Quartherhill Another very interesting hypothesis mrmoribund. It's valid to surmise that an engineering firm may want to acquire the tech and skill sets within ETC, and maybe IRD. Any shareholder would drool at the valuation ST Engineering put on TransCore. As you know, ETC has partnered with WSP on two of the seven current projects, so ETC, at least, is playing in that sandbox. Certainly, I agree that Lewis, and now Myers (with possibly one or two more to come) are capable of moving QTRH to that exit strategy. Hopefully there will be some color/comfirmation on corporate strategy- i.e. will QTRH remain as a holding company that acquires ITS ssets, develops them and at the right price sells them (the Constellation Software model) or do the ITS assets currently in place and others to be acquires get integrated into a company with broad ITS offering. Signals and prersentaions to date point to the integration model.
Let me throw out an another idea - a business building idea. As you know, one of the most successful ITS public company, as measured by profitability and stock is Verra Mobility. Their revenue comes from the public sector with toll management contracts with car rental companies. High margin. Perhaps Myers has the connections and insight to build a business case and leverage the Hubs Initiative with high use companies. Myers tenure at Cogniac reads on deep learning that's central to ITS smart city/transportation infrastructure initiatives and his Platrform Science board position reads on the transportation industry.
As far as Iteris is concerned, I'm not hanging onto anything. When I first raised ITI, QTRH and ITS had approximately the same market cap; QTRH has lots of cash and the belief of more to come from Wilan, plus the promise of profitabiity at ETC. Times have changed and the pricing has too - so an aquisiiton looks impracticable at this point. But the fundamental fit remains, imo.
The net of this thread is that the ITS market is in its infancy. There will be a plethora of opportunities and strategy will dictate direction and priority. It is fun to speculate tho. Have a great week.